I had a great time in Florida, got to see a lot of Phillies baseball. I tried to tour the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ stadium, as it was like 10 minutes from where I was staying. However, they’re installing several new video boards in there now, and they had the place closed off for tours. Darnit.
Lots has happened while I was away, I’ll get caught up before the season starts Sunday night, although right now I don’t know when that will be. :)

It’s a good thing I’m down in Florida, so I can’t be around all the Ranger fans throwing themselves off buildings because of the Jamey Wright fifth starter decision. The screams must be horrible back there in the Metroplex. I just have this to say.
At least they didn’t pick Bruce Chen!
At least I got to see Fabio Castro pitch yesterday in Sarasota against the Reds.. Oh wait, that wasn’t in a Rangers uniform. :(
This kind of decision is why the Rangers can never be like the Twins or Tigers. Because we’re not willing to give the kids a chance, and be damned everything else. Always looking to catch lightning in a bottle with mediocre veterans – Pedro Astacio anyone?

Greetings from Clearwater Florida!

My brother and I are here for Phillies Spring Training. I flew in from Dallas, and my brother flew in from Philly, and we met in the Tampa airport. However, due to various issues at the airport, we arrived a tad late for the game. We got there in the top of the 7th. We contemplated not even going, but we were already there. It was really nice – very sunny. As we got there, the Phillies had pulled out all their main players and had started putting in all the guys you’ll never hear from again. However, one of the pitchers they put in was our old friend, Antonio Alfonseca. We actually ended up leaving after the 8th inning, as we had parked in a place we probably shouldn’t have (media parking). So we left to retrieve our car, and ended up spending an inning and a half at the game, which is usually major affront. However, since we’re going to a game every day we’re here, I didn’t get bent out of shape about it.

Here’s a picture of what the stadium looked like, and our old buddy Alfonseca.

My brother and I leave in a few minutes to see the game up in Sarasota in the Reds park that the Phillies are playing today.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to finally be attending a Spring Training – something I’ve never done my entire life. Have always wanted to. But I won’t be in Surprise, AZ. I’ll be in Clearwater, FL at Phillies camp. I’ll be there with my brother and my stepbrothers.
I’m not sure what kind of updates I’ll be doing on the Ranger games while I’m in Florida, but I’ll try.

I haven’t had time to read this yet, but if I wait till I have that, I won’t remember to pass this on.
Headline article about CJ Wilson on ESPN’s baseball site this afternoon. check it out.

There’s an article online about which ballpark has the best seats.
They rank The Ballpark in Arlington’s Home Run Porch as #11 on the list, right behind the Green Monster Seats in Fenway (which I thought would be higher than that, actually). Here’s what they said about it.

This section has overhead electric fans to cool you on those 100-degree windless Texas evenings, when Mark Teixeira and Hank Blalock sends souvenirs your way.

I have never liked the Home Run Porch for a couple of reasons, one is in direct conflict with what they said. Yes, there are fans, but they’re so useless, they might as well not be there. In the upper home run porch, the fans are so far away from you that it’s stupid that they even exist. The lower home run porch is closer, but they’re still to far away to be effective.
I’ve sat in both the upper and lower home run porches, and I don’t like either of ’em. There is almost never a breeze there when I have sat, despite the acclaimed “jet stream” in the place. The worst part is that you can’t see the scoreboard, because it’s on top of you. I’ve been hearing rumours that they may rip out Sections 301-307 and install a second jumbotron up there. That would make the home run porches a bit more tolerable, but I am NOT a fan of sitting there at all. I have more fun out in the bleachers in center than the HR porches.
I wonder if the people who wrote that article ever actually SAT in the seats, or are just looking at ballpark design blueprints and pictures to determine these things.
If you ask me, I’d say anywhere in PNC Park. That place has one of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen.

I just found out tonight that someone close to me has brain cancer. I can’t quite bring myself to write game recaps right now.

If you are seeing this message, then you are seeing the Rangers site on the new server. I’ve recently moved around some websites I run to a new server, and this is one of them.
Things should be fine going forward, but you may be seeing this if you try going to one of my other sites (like the Black Sabbath site). It’s a DNS hiccup. If that happened to you, then you need to close your web browsers, go dump your local DNS cache, and retry.
This should all be academic in a day or two anyway.

Found an interesting link on one of the other team blogs I read, “Tiger Blog“. They are basically taking the slant that Michael Young’s contract would drive up the price of Carlos Guillen’s contract extension. They specifically make this statement:

Young is one year younger then Carlos Guillen and you can argue that both are pretty comparable players

I decided to look up their numbers for the last couple of seasons:

One thing that just leaps off the page is durability. In just the sampled years, the number of games played is a major difference. Number of hits is also a big difference. In fact, as you go down the line, the only number that seems pretty consistently the same is batting average. Before I looked up the numbers, I thought that Guillen had more home runs, but even then Mike Young’s got him beat over time.
After looking at the numbers, I do not believe that Guillen matches up with Young in all those phases. I don’t think Guillen needs to worry about Young’s contract impacting his. Guillen isn’t a $15 a year guy.
Michael Young is. Thank you Doug Melvin.

Got an email a few minutes ago from Victor Rojas. He informed me that he’s now blogging over at mlblogs again. His new one is entitled “The Spoils”, and can be reached here:
http://thespoils.mlblogs.com.
Vic’s a funny guy, so it’ll be nice to have some regular thoughts by him as the season goes along. Just don’t stop in mid stream, Vic! :)